


By Any Other Name

by Bo (Pikes_PornTime_Pamphlets)



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, spoiler-ish through episode 64, working through his recent developments
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-08-31
Updated: 2016-08-31
Packaged: 2018-08-12 06:16:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7923736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pikes_PornTime_Pamphlets/pseuds/Bo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Percival traded the Darkness for something else, and it's not yet clear which was worse.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By Any Other Name

He doesn’t have the dreams anymore. When he did, he would never remember them in the morning, but he knows that his sleep is different now. But it’s not as though a weight has lifted – no, that would be too easy. It just feels like a part of him is gone. 

 

It’s supposed to be a relief. And in a way, it is. He has a sister. He has a home. His friends are still with him, willing to share his burden. But he doesn’t want them to. After all this time, he still thinks back to that moment under the castle, watching the gun slowly dissolve into the acid. That dark kernel releasing its hold on his soul. Aloud, he mourns the gun – “It was so _expensive_!” – but when he is alone that night, he convinces himself it was the darkness that he missed.

 

It is a half truth. The whole of it is that he missed the _idea_ of that darkness lurking within him. He missed being able to think of himself as different from the others. Both better and worse at the same time. Better, because who else could do what he had done? Who was capable of making such devices? No other, only him. Worse, because if he was a bad person, truly bad, then it was ok. He could do terrible things. He could think mean, petty thoughts. He wouldn’t have to try, really try, to make the world better. He could give in, let his life go to shit, just let it all burn to the _fucking ground_. If he was that kind of person, then it was all ok, it was ok to not do anything about it. 

 

But now the darkness is gone and he misses it. He misses having an excuse to hate himself. To wallow. He misses having an excuse to feel different, to feel special. The darkness is gone, and in its place is his home. Whitestone. Poor, simple Whitestone.

 

It doesn’t happen quickly. He eases in to it. Tells himself that he’s simply adjusting to having his name mean something again. The others don’t notice, or if they do, they don’t say anything.

 

He takes his name and makes it his new darkness.

 

A De Rolo of Whitestone. It’s never really meant anything to him before. He had no context for it, no conception of what it meant outside the city. When the Briarwoods betrayed them, he thought it would never mean anything again. But now it does. And it makes him different. He is noble, after all. Nobility puts him above everyone else, but he knows that’s a lie, so it makes him worse than them too. Nobles are shit – _he_ is shit. He is different again. Special. Worse, and better, than everyone around him.

 

It feels good. The dragons are tearing the world apart, but he can still find a way to fixate on this idea of himself, this tragic, flawed, dangerous, mysterious man who does not really exist at all. Percival is a sad, strange little boy who got dealt a shitty hand, but he doesn’t want to be that boy, he wants to be the powerful bastard. He romanticizes this version of himself, and builds a world around this image, a world where everyone humbles themselves before his nobility and he can enjoy it and hate himself for not deserving it at the same time. It is better than the darkness.

 

He builds this world, this bubble, and nothing penetrates it. His friends are too distracted to know what's changed, to pull him aside and say something. Only for one instant, just one, does he doubt his vision.

 

Saundor descends from his perch within the tree. The Fey speaks only to _her_ , to Vex’ahlia. “We are not as different as you may think,” He says.

 

Percival doesn’t understand. Why her? What has Vex done? She is… normal. She isn’t like Percy, she doesn’t have that darkness. And this Fey isn’t even _dark_ , not like Orthax was. He’s just a smug, self-pitying asshole who’s going to drag Vex down with him by pulling her into his toxic little world…

 

The irony hits him like a freight train. He pushes it aside. He will deal with this realization afterwards, but now is not the time. The battle ensues, and they return to Whitestone.

 

Except, because it’s the Feywild, he has forgotten. He’s forgotten what Saundor said, what he realized about himself. Scanlan’s efforts don’t exactly help either way, but by the time Pike restores his true self, the damage is done. Whatever truth he saw in that tree, it’s too small, just a seed still, buried under the rush of other memories. He can ignore it. By the time he’s in the crypt with Vax, he’s back inside that bubble. He barely even hears what his friend is saying, dismissing his concerns with clever little quips. He tells Vax he doesn’t want to die as the man he is, and in a way, that’s true. Percival is not the man he thinks he is. He just _wants_ to be that man, and _that_ – not his cleverness, not his ‘pragmatism’ – is what makes him dangerous.


End file.
